Hrabal has his own particular way of looking at or reading the world, of exposing aspects of character or reality one hadn't thought of. It is a quasi-surrealist method, in which everything depends on an extraordinary angle of perception. It has its dangers: it consumes an inordinate amount of personal experience; its disjointed nature makes the development of a synthetic outlook or philosophy difficult (but it helps to avoid ideology); it generates an intoxication with words and images; and the inflexible originality it imposes, similar to that of a Sunday painter, may become too familiar for the reader and a self-perpetuating mould for the author.

A conventional strait-jacket does not suit Hrabal, however. Even A Close Watch on the Trains, his most conventional book, is really a series of picturesque episodes arranged in the shape of a novel….

In Postriziny, too, he seems to have set himself a...